Referring to FIG. 1, a network surveillance system 1 typically includes a network switch (whose role is equivalent to that of the gateway device 12 in FIG. 1) connected with a plurality of IP cameras 11 and a network surveillance device (e.g., a network video recorder, or NVR) 13. Images taken by the IP cameras 11 are forwarded by the network switch to the network video recorder 13 for storage. While network switches bring security and convenience to networking, their difficult setting procedures hinder the traditional closed-circuit television (CCTV) service providers from entering the digital surveillance market and taking advantage of the convenience provided by digitization.
When setting a network switch, a large number of factors must be considered in order to achieve the optimal configuration. In fact, the factors are so many that even an IT professional is not immune to setting errors. Should a wrong setting be made, operation and maintenance of the afflicted network switch will present a problem. For example, it is not uncommon that a variety of terminal devices 14 (e.g., personal computers, IPTV receivers, and cloud storage devices) coexist in the local network where the IP cameras 11 are installed. In that case, data packets of different types tend to share the same network and end up mixed together, occupying a considerable portion of the bandwidth of the local network. Furthermore, these packets are not classified by transmission speed, so delayed transmission, or even loss, of important image packets takes place frequently. As a result, stored image frames get missing, and low replay quality ensues. This partly explains why, despite the prevalence of surveillance systems nowadays, businesses are still subject to irreparable losses attributable to the absence of critical surveillance images.
The issue to be addressed by the present invention is to improve the conventional network surveillance system 1 so that the onerous setting process can be dispensed with, allowing a user with basic network knowledge to complete all the complicated settings rapidly with the assistance of system automation, without having to perform an optimization operation or other command-based operations manually.